Editorial: Reflect today on sacrifices made for U.S.

Sunday

May 25, 2008 at 12:01 AMMay 25, 2008 at 7:13 PM

Today is Memorial Day. It is a day to recognize the sacrifices of those who have served in the armed forces. Throughout our history, generations of young men and women have voluntarily served in defense of the ideals and principles we cherish.

Today is Memorial Day.

It is a day to recognize the sacrifices of those who have served in the armed forces. Throughout our history, generations of young men and women have voluntarily served in defense of the ideals and principles we cherish. Throughout the weekend, there were parades and ceremonies honoring that service and sacrifice.

That spirit of service and sacrifice continues today with a new generation. And in that spirit, we’d like to focus on the members of the Connecticut National Guard’s 1109th AVCRD unit. On Friday, the Norwich Bulletin traveled to Fort Dix, N.J., to visit with 150 men and women from that unit preparing for deployment to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait within the month.

For many, it will be their second deployment. The 1109th was the first Connecticut National Guard unit to be activated and deployed to Iraq at the beginning of the war. In the four years since returning home, many of them could have left the guard when their enlistments expired — but they didn’t. The unit has an 83 percent retention rate.

We asked them about the sacrifices they were making.

“Soldiers don’t look at it as a sacrifice. They look at it as what they do, their job,” said Capt. Raymond Chicoski of Colchester, Conn., making his second deployment. It’s the families who make the true sacrifice, said the husband and father of three.

Staff Sgt. Alicia Valli, 23, also of Colchester, joined the guard at the age of 17, still a senior in high school, within months after 9/11. Her six-year enlistment was up this past March. She could have gotten out. Instead, she extended her enlistment and intends to enlist for another six years come December. There is no sacrifice when you’re doing what you want to do, she said.

Losing employees

There are others making sacrifices as well. The employers of these part-time soldiers are forced to give up one of their best employees again.

“There is a financial impact,” said Kim Kalajainen, vice president and chief information officer for Lawrence & Memorial Hospital. For the second time in five years, the hospital’s biomedical engineering department manager, Jim Liska, will be away from his job for just more than a year, leaving the hospital to fill the void.

“It is a sacrifice and it will be a strain,” she said.

But what’s more important is to have within their ranks the very best, the top talent in their field. You will find no better than those who serve with the dedication, commitment and willingness to sacrifice.

Few of us will make a sacrifice today.

Instead, we will gather with friends and families. We may line the streets of our hometowns to cheer the marchers in today’s parades, attend a ceremony recognizing the sacrifices made and later gather in the backyards across the region for the traditional barbecue.

We might, for a moment, pause to think about those who have served and have given so much in service to our nation through the years — asking for nothing in return, just doing their jobs. We also might consider the families and the sacrifices they’ve made.

And we also might be reminded that there are those who continue to serve today, and how fortunate we are that they do.